Lena Dunham Says She Was Once Fired by HBO

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Feb 21, 2014 at 12:01 AMFeb 21, 2014 at 8:05 PM

Lena Dunham may be the golden child of HBO now, but there was a time when the network actually fired the Girls star.In an interview with Grantland's Bill Simmons, Dunham reveals she was let go from working on the network's ...

TV Guide

Lena Dunham may be the golden child of HBO now, but there was a time when the network actually fired the Girls star.

In an interview with Grantland's Bill Simmons, Dunham reveals she was let go from working on the network's miniseries Mildred Pierce. "I got fired off the one day I did," she says. "Fired might be a rough word but I got sweetly dismissed."

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The Golden Globe winner says she blames herself for the incident. "I didn't practice," she explains. "I looked over the script with my mom and since the project takes place in the '30s, I was like, 'Am I supposed to do any kind of accent?' My mom was like, 'They are hiring you to be you. Just go for it.'"

Suffice it to say, being herself did not work out for Dunham. "You could just see everybody's face drop," she says. "It was like Ricky Gervais in Extras. They were like, 'This is a f---ing disaster.'"

Dunham says she had flashbacks to the bad experience when she had to hire a dialect coach for a scene on Girls. The coach turned out to be the same person she worked with on Mildred Pierce. "I had like a full P.T.S.D. reaction," she says. "I couldn't take it because she was the bearer of such negative memories for me."

Watch the full interview below:

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